Rotary cutters are used for cutting fabric in quilt making and hobby sewing, among other uses. Such rotary cutters come in many different designs, each of which includes a handle portion and a “wheel blade” or rotary cutting blade. The various designs for rotary cutters include differing handle shapes, for ease of use or user preference, with a rotary cutting blade rotatably mounted near one end. Various designs include differing blade guard features which are intended to reduce the potential for injury to a user.
The rotary cutting blades for such cutters typically come in two standard sizes, a 45 mm diameter rotary cutting, blade and a 60 mm diameter rotary cutting blade. One known problem with rotary cutters is the relatively high replacement cost of the blades for these popular fabric, craft and hobby cutting tools. Additionally, as noted in the prior art, many rotary cutting blades lack perfect roundness.
Known sharpeners for rotary cutting blades include sharpeners for the large rotary blades of commercial cutters for meat slicing and the like, which are used with the motor driven blade. Also, known are smaller manual sharpeners for hand held rotary cutters, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,238,096 and 5,660,582, the disclosures of each of which are incorporated by reference herein. However, this type of manual sharpener requires the wheel blade to be removed from the cutter and secured within a sharpener housing. This requires the user to remove and replace the blade from two different devices, which increases the downtime required for sharpening and exposes the user to potential injury while handling the unguarded blade.
Accordingly there exists a need for assemblies and devices that address these problems. A system or assembly that allowed for a rotary blade to be honed or sharpened without removing the wheel blade from a hand held rotary cutter would be an improvement in the art.